Manchester's Gay Village is home to a quirky tea room where you can have your very own Alice in Wonderland experience. This venue is full of delights and easter eggs for fans of the story to look out for, and is a perfect location to celebrate afternoon tea week from August 7-13.
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00:00 It's afternoon tea week this week from the 7th to the 13th of August and we are here in the heart
00:05 of Manchester at Richmond Tea Rooms, a whimsical venue inspired by Alice in Wonderland. Anyway,
00:11 can't be late, the Mad Hatter will start without me!
00:13 Okay so this is all Alice in Wonderland themed. We offer afternoon tea all day, every day. We
00:24 offer different levels of afternoon tea, so depending if you want to like come in to get
00:27 some scones, we do like yeah sandwiches and scones and then we also do like the full high tea as well.
00:32 I think what sets us apart as well we also do our like events which is like Mad Hatter's Tea
00:38 Party, so we have like performers who come in, you have a bit of afternoon tea, play like games,
00:42 prizes, very very crazy. What was the inspiration behind the Alice in Wonderland theme? It was from
00:49 the owners Nick and Andrew and obviously if you think of afternoon tea, think of Alice in
00:54 Wonderland Mad Hatter's Tea Parties, so they just took the theme and just blew it off and went with
00:59 it. What's the reaction when people come in and see all these amazing fairy lights and all of the
01:04 flowers, how do they normally react? They are literally like in awe like of the venue like
01:10 it's because it's so like decorated so lovely, it's very Instagramable, people love taking
01:15 pictures, just wandering around, it's like literally stepping into Alice in Wonderland.
01:20 The venue was named as number 43 on the list of top 50 most Instagramable cafes in the world
01:27 according to global travel site Big 7 Travel. Of course we had to get a taste of their
01:32 quintessentially British afternoon tea, complete with cocktails in china cups.
01:37 We do offer a few selections, we've tried to like do like, it depends how much food people want to
01:41 eat really, you can start off as I said with like we do scones with a pot of tea and then we also
01:46 like do a Hatter's tea, so all our afternoon tea is named after Alice in Wonderland characters, so
01:51 Alice tea, Hatter's tea, Queen's tea, so your Queen's tea would be like your full high tea,
01:58 scones, sandwiches, cakes and a pot of tea. And what is the most popular one out of those?
02:03 I think the Queen's one, people like to come in for cakes if you're going to come out and just
02:06 get the full work. Okay so are there any other like quirky elements to the afternoon tea or is
02:10 it just come in sit down and have the food? People come in sometimes like oh we thought
02:13 you'd all be dressed up, I'm like no, it's not quite like that because obviously we're like a
02:18 queer venue, we're in Manchester's gay village, around Pride as well we have a lot of characters
02:22 running around so that's more immersive for people and we tend to love that. I really love teas,
02:26 like a lot of people come in and they're like I don't like tea and I'm like well you're in the
02:29 wrong place for that, I've got loads of facts about tea that I'll bore the customers with.
02:33 All tea comes from the same plant, I think people like think there's like a green tea plant,
02:37 a black tea plant, it comes from the same plant, I think that's very interesting. I didn't know
02:41 that, that's an interesting tea fact. It is very interesting, it's like different
02:45 oxidation levels so your green tea is like not oxidised at all and then black tea is like
02:50 complete oxidisation, turns brown, different flavours. It speaks for itself really, we have
02:55 lots of returning people. In fact one woman came in, she's like I test scones professionally and
02:59 yours is one of the best and I was like I need to see some credentials because that's a good
03:03 good statement.